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High-Pressure Systems Suppress Fires in Seconds

Saturday, 01 January 2011

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“We were trying to make something more effective and safer for firefighters to use,” Groonwald says.

The idea of management of high pressure flows, like ORBITEC does with rocket engine design, repeatedly came to mind. Working with its partners, HMA incorporated elements derived from ORBITEC’s propulsion work into its design for fire suppression, and the improvements significantly enhanced the performance of HMA’s UHP systems. For example, the company studied how to better manage the flow of a liquid to create an energetic blanket of fine water droplets. Through iterative design and testing, they optimized a method for providing a continuous and effective stream that uses much less suppressant.

Benefits

HMA’s propulsion-inspired design is only one of the benefits the company’s UHP suppression systems provide to firefighters. The systems introduce an approach to fire suppression that is complementary to—and in a number of cases superior to—traditional firefighting methods.

“The fire industry still has a mentality of ‘surround and drown’—the more water you put around a fire, the faster the fire will go out,” Groonwald says. “But that is not necessarily true.”

“[The HMA system] sucked the life out of the fire and did it faster than anything I’ve ever seen before,” says Devin Misiewicz, captain of the Vandenberg Air Force Base Fire Department.

The key to the HMA system is the pressure of its discharge, which results in smaller droplets dispersed on the fire. The smaller droplets create a greater total surface area contacting the flames— four times the total surface area of the larger droplets from standard, low pressure systems. In addition to helping rapidly extinguish a fire, HMA’s UHP approach also quickly reduces the temperature around a blaze—in the case of the Vandenberg test from 1,400 °F to below 250 °F within 60 seconds, about 2 minutes and 30 seconds faster than the standard equipment—and results in less smoke.

“What this does is create a safer environment for the firefighters to conduct an offensive suppression attack on the fire,” says Groonwald. Using less water also reduces one of the major sources of damage from a fire situation: the water itself.

HMA’s Hydrus systems are commercially available in a range of platforms. The T4 and T6 First Responder Emergency Systems incorporate the system into easily maneuverable, all-terrain vehicles. Along with the company’s Proteus Series Brush Trucks and skid-mounted mobile units that can be loaded onto any number of vehicles, HMA’s systems provide a quick-response firefighting tool for a range of fire situations. Carrying their own water sources, these systems are ideal for fighting wildfires in areas unreachable by standard fire trucks. The systems’ high pressure discharge can also penetrate 7 inches into the ground if desired, cooling lingering embers and heat sources that can reignite a wildland-type fire. The UHP systems are also highly effective against hydrocarbon fuel-based car fires and have been repeatedly proven to extinguish fully engulfed cars in 9 seconds.

While Groonwald says that HMA’s systems are not intended to replace standard firefighting technology in all cases, they can be installed on fire trucks as a first attack tool complementing traditional low pressure, high volume systems.

“Our systems become a force multiplier,” says Groonwald. “You can do more safely with the same amount of people.”

Government partnerships like those between HMA and ORBITEC, NASA, and the Air Force have supported the research and development leading to the creation of these game-changing firefighting tools, says Marty Gustafson, ORBITEC engineer and applications research manager.

“This is where the government-industry partnerships make a difference,” she says. “They allow you to prove out a technology in a way that gives you instant credibility.”

The experts are buying in: The U.S. military employs 4 UHP units at the forward operating base near Kabul in Afghanistan to help combat fuel fires and firebomb attacks. The Navy utilizes the systems in the Middle East, and 12 Air Force bases in the United States employ the technology. Alaska is also examining the systems for remote towns, where they can be used by operators without firefighting training, and the Mojave Air and Space Port in California features the technology on a specially designed rapid response rescue truck. Plus, municipal fire departments are interested in the technology’s NASA-enhanced capabilities, meaning cities and towns nationwide could soon benefit from another example of space exploration technology improving daily life.

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